Shattered Ones
by guineapiggie
Summary: "The fragments of her life were lying at her feet, glittering in the sunlight, with edges sharp as razorblades. She could feel them cutting the soles of her feet, see her blood running over the sparkling glass. Diamonds and rubies. A morbidly beautiful sight. But she was a vampire. Morbid was nothing she couldn't deal with." One-shot. Rated T for language; sarcasm alert


**Shattered Ones**

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own a thing.

_***A/N* Well, if I wanted to be dramatic, I'd say this was my reckoning. Less dramatically spoken, I've been pretty disappointed with these two shows lately and I thought I could make something of that disappointment. If you don't share my opinion, you probably won't like this. You have been warned.**_

_**Passages in Italics are taken from the song "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday.**_

* * *

"Well, you're good Stefan again. You're in control. Sorry, you might get the girl but you lose the edge." -_Damon Salvatore, Heart Of Darkness_

* * *

_And I've lost who I am and I can't understand_

_Why my heart is so broken, rejecting your love_

_._

.

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

Damn it, she didn't understand it herself. Somehow she had managed to shut out the truth all summer.

The disappointment and the sadness tasted so bitter. After everything she'd been trough, after all those years and all those deaths, she finally was where she wanted to be - _with Damon _\- and now it felt all wrong.

Maybe she just wasn't made for happiness. It wasn't the first time the thought had occurred to her.

Damon stood at the fireplace, his hands hanging limply at his sides and his eyes staring at her in disbelief.

"What do you mean, you don't know who I am? I changed, hell, yes, isn't that what you wanted?"

Even his voice had lost its edge. He sounded weak and a strangled laugh fell from her lips. _Weak _was the last adjective that would have ever come to her mind at the subject of Damon Salvatore.

When had he adopted those puppy eyes? She had always been wary of his icy blue gaze and the things it could do to her, the way he could undress her with his eyes or send shivers down her spine if he wanted to.

And now all their colour reminded her of was shallow water.

"What I _wanted_? I don't know what's wrong with you. When you talk to me I feel like you're reading out a badly written script."

_You sound like your brother, _was what she didn't say.

"God, Elena! First you want me to be _good, _now you think there's something wrong with me. Make up your mind!"

She rubbed the tears off her face. "I- I'm sorry, Damon. I can't explain it. I just… I can't find the man I fell in love with. It's like you're playing a role to make me happy and I know how much you hated the person your father forced you to become. The Damon I knew couldn't stand acting like this for two hours and he'd kill whoever tried to force him to. I don't want you to do this for me. I want you to be happy, too."

"I am happy!"

"Yeah, now you are. But for how long do you think you can do this? We're _immortal, _Damon. Do you think you can be somebody else for all eternity?"

"I don't know what you're on about, Elena." He still looked at her as if she had gone mad, but she felt the emptiness growing more heavy by the second.

"Come and find me when you do, then," she muttered and sped out of the parlour, knowing he was fast enough to come after her if he'd wanted to, but he didn't.

.

_Without, love gone wrong, lifeless words carry on_

_And I know, all I know is that the end's beginning_

.

Feeling empty and shaken, she grabbed her handbag and her car keys and had stumbled through the door before she even knew what she was doing.

Her phone on the passenger seat kept buzzing and she knew it was Damon, Stefan, Caroline.

_Caroline. _Coming to think about it, she had been pretty two-faced lately. First she told her for months how Damon was a bad person and how terribly wrong it was to be with him and yet all that time she'd been fantasising about Klaus. And, worst of all, she'd given in to those fantasies, and no matter how often she told Elena and herself how much she hated herself for it, she had liked it. She was crazy about him. It was so idiotic it almost made Elena laugh.

All of sudden, she lost her nerve, grabbed the black troublemaker and hurled it out of the window, hearing how it shattered on the concrete and was crushed underneath the wheels of the car behind her.

It only came to her that she was running away, just like Damon always did, when she passed through Nashville. She remembered numbly how furious she got at him when he did that, how she'd called him a childish coward.

But, when it all came down, Elena Gilbert had never been one for making decisions, and if she wasn't even able to bloody decide on which brother she loved more, nobody could expect her to behave rationally right now. The fragments of her life were lying at her feet, glittering in the sunlight. Beautiful and worthless, with edges sharp as razorblades. She could feel them cutting the soles of her feet, see her blood running over the sparkling glass.

Like diamonds and rubies.

A morbidly beautiful sight. But she was a fucking vampire. Morbid was nothing she couldn't deal with.

.

_Who I am from the start, take me home to my heart_

_Let me go and I will run, I will not be silent_

.

She couldn't tell how many hours had passed when she stopped the car. Austin, Texas.

The only time she'd ever left Virginia had been her trips with Damon. The first time he'd halfway kidnapped her, the second they had been looking for Stefan and he'd been scooping around in her underwear and the last time, she'd been all but herself and had left Damon on a rooftop.

It was early morning by now and bright sunlight streamed through the city and reflected in the shop windows.

She walked into the next best café and dropped on the plain red leather bench in the corner, ordered a cappuccino and threw the waiter a smile.

A couple sat on a table at the far end of the room, arguing quietly. Elena grinned, grateful for the distraction and her enhanced hearing.

They had clearly been arguing for a while. The petite dark haired woman sat bent over the table, looking like she was about to grab the collar of his hideous shirt and shake him.

"...I just want to know who you are and what you did to my consultant. Because the man I knew wouldn't just disappear for a year, writing cheesy letters about some fucking _dolphins _and then just come back like - like none of it had ever happened, all those things, all those years. Ten years, Patrick, _ten years_," the woman said, her voice shaking.

"I had to leave the past behind," he gave back, defiant and angry. "That's what it was all about!"

"God damn it, Patrick! Angela and Charlotte. _Your own daughter! _I don't believe you can just take that ring off and forget," she whispered and added icily: "And if you can, you're not the man I thought you were."

He stared at her, completely taken aback, then ran his hands through his blonde curls and muttered: "You can't understand that, Lisbon."

A cold laugh escaped her lips. "Oh, can't I? I mean, it's not like I sacrificed my whole life to someone else's sick revenge plan, like I let you use me like a _slave, _it's not like I lost everyone I considered my family and the man I loved all at one day. I haven't been merely existing and trying to remember what my life was about before you came stumbling out of that stupid elevator. Although - hang on. I _did._"

The man seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He looked like he was about to cry. Then he shook his head mechanically, raised a shaking hand. "I- _Teresa._" Her name sounded like it was slicing up his lips when he uttered it.

A handful of tears ran down her cheeks at the sound of the tenderness in his voice, but she didn't say anything.

The man stood up without another word and stumbled out of the doors.

Elena could hear the woman's tears splashing on the table top.

Maybe she wasn't the only one in the world who felt that way after all.

.

Elena dug a tissue out of her handbag and sat down on the man's deserted seat.

"Here."

She looked up, her cheeks shining with tears. She tucked her dark hair behind her ears and took the tissue with an embarrassed smile. "Thanks. It's silly, it's just…" She laughed and rubbed her face dry. "Sorry. I'm Teresa."

"Elena." She nodded at the door with a bitter smile. "I know the feeling."

.

.

_There's a light, there's the sun, taking all shattered ones _

_To the place we belong and his love will conquer all_

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**_Please take a moment to review._**


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